The most damaging and widespread fiction in the US that both the Left, Right and Middle believe and implicitly subscribe to is that the government’s fiscal affairs in any way resemble that of a household or have any relation at all to bank accounts, loans or saving as experienced by the average person.

Anyone’s checking account or piggy bank under the bed is about as related to the monetary affairs of a sovereign fiat-currency-issuing governmental body as a roller skate is to an interstellar space probe.

I was going to say that it is vastly more complicated, but that isn’t even the case. It’s that the two are utterly unrelated.

I was reacting to the many utterly dumb and vapid comments that are found here, though those comments only hint at what set me off.

Why does this matter? Because in just one example if the government prints up a bunch of money and simply gives it to a bunch of people in a depressed area – everyone is better off. Including the people of course who will oppose the other group getting something for “free” as the receiving group will then be able to spend their money buying products and services from the group in opposition. (This is known as “welfare,” by the way, at least in the US.)

Yes, yes, inflation. Inflation does occur in a supply-constrained world. Does that look like the world we are in to you?

For instance, if the US government simply sent every single person in Mississippi $10,000 right now (the poorest state in the union), the entire country would be better off immediately.

Where did that money come from? It didn’t come from anywhere. Why won’t it spark inflation? Because the economy is and has been for a long time nearly deflationary due to depressed demand.

But one example of many possible.